Black Scorpion Read online

  “Plenty say the same thing about me. And it was supposed to be a show, all for—”

  “Charity, I know,” Alexander completed. “And for everyone in the audience, and watching on television, that was exactly the case. But it was a never a show for you, Michael. It was a test and it worked out exactly as you wanted.”

  “You really believe that?”

  Alexander’s steely eyes narrowed on him. “The Seven Sins is your territory and Segura broke one of your prime rules by hurting a woman. But you’re also a tycoon responsible for providing jobs and livelihoods for thousands of families. Warriors, even me, are replaceable. You’re not.”

  And that’s when all the power in the Seven Sins died.

  TWENTY-THREE

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Edward Devereaux was standing at the glass wall of his Daring Sea suite, staring at the spectacle beyond and imagining himself living in some hybrid ocean environment as one of the sharks cruised by. He heard his DNA analyzer beep to signal the completion of its work and moved back toward the bathroom.

  “Don’t forget to try one of our shows, Edward, or our spa, nominated as one of the five best in North America,” said Angel. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

  “Not yet, Angel, but thank you.”

  “Sure thing, sir.”

  Devereaux had just caught his own reflection in the thick glass on the suite’s Daring Sea side when the lights died, the suite lit suddenly only by the eerie translucent glow emanating from the Daring Sea beyond the glass. No emergency light snapped on. No preprogrammed voice came on to issue a warning, even Angel silent on the matter.

  But there was enough light for Devereaux to trace his way to the steel, bulkhead-like door and find the handle. He pulled and twisted to no result. Checked the security bolt and found it unfastened, then tried the door again.

  It didn’t budge. He was locked in.

  Figuring it must be a glitch in the system triggered by the blackout, Devereaux moved cautiously to the nearest phone to ring the front desk.

  Nothing. The phone was dead.

  “Angel,” he called, suddenly longing for the virtual concierge’s voice. “Angel?”

  But her screen had gone dark, too, lost with the power.

  “Angel!” he called out again anyway.

  Devereaux was headed back to the desk to retrieve his cell phone when he heard a hum-like buzzing; not so much as heard it really, as felt it at the very core of his eardrums. His head began to ring, then pound, feeling like the pressure of a deep underwater dive. Since he was only forty or so feet below the surface and the atmospheric pressure inside all the Daring Sea suites was constantly normalized, he blamed this too on the blackout, feeling the grasp of panic begin to tighten on him.

  Devereaux flailed for the souvenir book off which he’d lifted Michael Tiranno’s DNA, but it slipped off the desk and rattled to the carpeting. Instead of trying to retrieve it, he stumbled his way to the door and began banging on it, hoping someone might hear his pounds even as the pressure in his head intensified. Then he heard a strange crackling sound, something like popcorn popping in a microwave, and swung back toward his suite’s wall looking out into the Daring Sea.

  “Angel!… Angel!”

  But the virtual concierge remained silent, and now the glass was starting to crack, the fissures spreading outward both left and right from the center. Ripples forming into what quickly took on the impression of a vast impressionist design stitched across the thick glass. Devereaux swung back to the door and pounded its steel even harder.

  “Help me! Somebody, help me!”

  His head throbbed.

  “Help me!”

  His head felt ready to explode.

  “I’m trapped!”

  He knew he’d screamed the words, but the pressure building in his head kept him from hearing them. He turned back toward the glass wall to see the ripples joining up and widening. The last sight he ever recorded was that of the center portion of the glass wall caving inward, allowing the first torrents of water from the Daring Sea to crash through and slam into him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  The world seemed to freeze, the blackness everywhere within the Seven Sins, and beyond its glass façade.

  “Emergency lighting should be coming on now,” Michael said to Alexander, after ten seconds had passed.

  But it didn’t. The two men looked at each other, conscious of the slightest ripple of panic around them.

  Alexander raised his backup walkie-talkie to his lips, then lowered it just as fast. “It’s dead.”

  “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s not just us,” Alexander said, gazing outside. “Looks like the whole Strip has been hit.”

  Those manning the floors and games of the casino initially could have no idea how long the blackness would remain and would thus have immediately instituted their own emergency procedures. First sweeping toward their respective tables from the outside in to keep all wagers in place. Traditionally dealers would literally lay over their chip trays with their arms and elbows pulled up to safeguard the sides of the tray. And they’d remain in this position until such time that either the lighting returned and the games resumed, or closed off with all chips collected. Dealers, boxmen, and floor supervisors would similarly move to secure all monies, chips, markers, cards, and dice from within the betting area from possible theft, bet capping, or pinching. The round in progress when the power died would be called dead with the game, hand, or roll picked up once it returned.

  A steady flood of guests began hurrying toward the emergency exits, shoving the doors open and creating a logjam further intensified by a rush of patrons from the casino area with chips they’d managed to pilfer held in their grasps. Michael could feel the chaos around him, a mob mentality setting in with nothing he could do to forestall it. He lost track of time and place, conscious only of Alexander dragging him forward under a protective shield with his pistol drawn.

  “Stay alert, Michael.”

  His enemies had gone through far greater lengths than this to get him. But the unfathomable depths they would’ve had to manage to achieve a total shutdown of anything electronic was just starting to occur to him, when the lights and power suddenly snapped back on.

  And screams erupted from the viewing area of the Daring Sea.

  * * *

  Alexander and Michael sprinted across the lobby, followed by a phalanx of security guards. They slipped through cracks in the mass of humanity still trapped between intentions and pushed their way past those guests heading toward the screams too. They reached the Daring Sea viewing area to find spectators screaming in disbelief, parents covering the eyes of their children so they couldn’t see Assassino himself cresting over the surface to snatch what at first glance appeared to be a jagged side of beef in his jaws, but at second look was something else entirely.

  A man’s upper body, bitten off at the waist.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  RETEZAT MOUNTAINS, TRANSYLVANIA

  “I thought I told you to keep yourself scarce,” Henri Bernard sneered when he saw Scarlett standing at the entrance of the command tent.

  Scarlett watched him turn all the way around on the stool placed before the sealed case that still contained the ancient journal she’d lifted from the ground.

  “You’re no linguist, Henri. Why don’t you let me have another go at those pages?”

  “Because you’ve proven you can neither be trusted nor relied upon.”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “No, I’m just managing the site.”

  “My actions were wrong. I admit that. But I had my reasons.”

  She stepped inside the tent and let the flap close behind her. The strong scent of coffee grounds proved overpowering in the tent’s tight confines, as Scarlett drew close enough to Bernard to see the coal black brew that looked thick as tar atop the makeshift stove. She could also see he’d set up th
e portable electron microscope on the simple work table that was coated in a layer of dust.

  Bernard shook his head. “You’re even a bigger fool than I thought. So much time spent looking at the past that you can no longer see the present clearly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That you’re hopelessly naive. I’m sorry it’s come to this, I truly am.”

  Something in his eyes scared her.

  “A few pages of parchment, Scarlett,” Bernard said, following her eyes. “Tell me, were they truly worth your career?”

  “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

  * * *

  Outside the tent, Scarlett stood in the morning air under the warm sun, perspiration starting to soak through her thick shirt as she tried to steady herself with several deep breaths. Anything to fight off the impulse to storm back inside the command tent.

  She’d just started to head toward the area of the dig itself when she spotted a pair of villagers from nearby Vadja approaching with shotguns slung from their shoulders. The dig paid them, rather handsomely, to provide security, thinly veiled tribute to keep local trouble away. It was the way things were done here in Romania and not unlike the way they were done in a multitude of other countries where she’d worked, particularly in Ephesus (Turkey) and Petra (Jordan). Even Israel wasn’t immune to such practices, especially those digs based in the West Bank.

  She wondered if Henri had ordered the security guards to keep an eye on her. But then she saw them veer slightly in the boy Ilie’s direction to get some water, his first customers of the day.

  Scarlett crossed the area where a bevy of college archaeology majors were standing around the remains of the vast Roman temple, wondering when they’d be allowed to get back to work. She passed behind the ruins and rested her shoulders against an outgrowth of rock, craving a cigarette even though she’d quit smoking upon earning her Masters degree. Quite an accomplishment, considering that—

  Rat-tat-tat … Rat-tat-tat …

  Scarlett’s thinking was interrupted by the blare of what sounded like firecrackers, taking her back to Fourth of July celebrations spent at the family’s lakeside home.

  But this wasn’t the Fourth of July.

  And that’s when the screams started.

  TWENTY-SIX

  RETEZAT MOUNTAINS, TRANSYLVANIA

  Scarlett poked her head out from behind the excavated temple ruins long enough to see black-clad gunmen with what looked like scarves disguising their faces rushing about everywhere. Opening fire on her friends and associates wildly and indiscriminately. Mowing down whoever crossed their paths or had the sense to try to hide or flee.

  She ducked back behind cover, breathing turned shallow, shoulders pressed against jagged rock so hard it bit into her skin through the fabric of her shirt. More gunfire and screams, pleas of mercy and cries for help, sounded beyond. A young college student, a beautiful coed who’d borrowed Scarlett’s shampoo just yesterday, surged by only to be cut down by bullets that stitched up her spine and sprayed a cloud of frothy blood into the air, as she fell forward. She landed with her face angled on Scarlett, dead eyes seeming to lock upon her.

  More booms resounded from the gypsy guards’ shotguns, followed by a concentrated automatic fire loud enough to bubble Scarlett’s ears. She peeked out again, following another pair of the guards hired to protect the site charging forward with guns spitting fire until they were cut down by a blaze of bullets. Then she spotted the boy Ilie running toward the area of the temple, bullets tearing through his backpack and sending bursts of water flying in his wake.

  “Ilie!” she yelled, forgetting in that moment he was deaf. “Il—”

  She remembered when he changed direction suddenly. Shedding the backpack as he darted away from one gunman who’d snared him in his line of sight and then another.

  He’ll never make it. He’ll be killed like the others.

  Scarlett burst out from behind the heavy stone remains of the excavated ruins of the temple, cut a diagonal path straight to Ilie and dragged him down to the ground just ahead of a fresh staccato burst. Impact with the gravel and stone shattered the cell phone in her front pants pocket and she felt it break apart as she rolled atop the boy to shield him. He was sobbing, the first sounds she’d ever heard him make, save for an occasional laugh. She turned his face so he could read her lips, hoping his English had gotten good enough.

  “We’re going to be okay, but we’ve got to get away from here!”

  Tears rolled down from his moist eyes, dragging streaks of grime across his cheeks. She’d just helped the boy back to his feet when one of the phantom-like gunman ground to a halt directly before them, ready to shoot in the same moment a huge blast sounded and he went flying backward with his chest erupting blood, gristle, and gore. Scarlett whirled, shoving Ilie behind her, to find one of the gypsy guards on his knees, reloading his shotgun while bleeding badly from the shoulder and side. A fresh hail of fire seemed to lift him almost upright before dropping him back to the ground in a cluttered heap.

  By then, Scarlett had taken Ilie in tow and was darting through the obstacle course–like layers of the unearthed temple. She’d had guns pointed at her before in less than friendly countries and settings, but until now had never experienced one fired her way, never mind from a veritable army. She felt the heat of the bullets whizzing past her, or imagined she did, hearing the distinctive thwacks of rounds cracking into unearthed fragments of the ancient Roman temple scattered around her.

  Since he couldn’t hear the gunfire, those impacts that sprayed flecks of limestone into the air froze Ilie each time, forcing Scarlett to tug him even harder. She heard him whimpering, knew she needed to stay strong if she wanted to save the boy as well as herself.

  They reached the foot of the mountains as more gunfire concentrated their way, disappearing into the brush to leave the bullets and gunmen behind them.

  But not the last of the screams. Scarlett pictured the faces of her fellow workers and team members, friends now. Thirty-five of them, mostly college age. Wide-eyed and bright, but no more.

  Their screams curdled Scarlett’s blood. She grabbed tighter hold of the boy so as not to lose track of him in the cover of the brush and woods, finding renewed purpose in saving him, as if saving herself was not enough. She waited for the sounds of pursuit and more gunfire trained their way, certain they’d be coming before too very much longer.

  And they did.

  Just a single set of steps, though. Scarlett and Ilie rounded a bend leading up a hillside that formed the lowestmost reaches of the mountains that ringed the area like vast stone sentinels. She yanked the boy to a halt, pushed him away from her and signed for him to stay still and quiet. She’d hoped to find a severed branch to slam like a baseball bat into the gunman’s face when he rounded the bend. But finding none, she opted for the biggest rock she could hold comfortably, lurching back upright just as their pursuer drew close enough for her to hear his boots thrashing through the ground thickets.

  Scarlett lunged out when she first glimpsed him in a hazy blur. She’d planned to crash the rock into his face, but he sped past her, already grinding to a stop when she pounced. Hitting him once in the back of the skull and then again, again, and again as he dropped to his knees and fell over face-first.

  Scarlett grabbed Ilie by the hand and led him on an erratic path through the thick and gnarled brush. Finally the boy tugged at her sharply and collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, eyes still wide with terror. Scarlett crouched even with him, hoping she didn’t look as scared as she felt.

  “The village!” she said, making the sign for that as well. “We need to get to the village!”

  Ilie nodded, slowly recovering his breath.

  This way, he signed, grabbing hold of her to pull himself back to his feet.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  There was no way at that point to either retrieve the body or to determine its identity. Mi
chael initially figured someone must have slipped, or been jostled, into the Daring Sea when the power went out. Then Alexander pulled him aside, the night continuing to grow worse by the moment.

  “There’s been a breach in the Daring Sea,” he reported, adding, “one of the suites.”

  * * *

  Those dark five minutes had plunged the entire city of Las Vegas, the Strip in particular, into utter chaos. Traffic remained gridlocked and dozens of accidents had been reported after the traffic signals went down. The Strip itself remained a parking lot, a scene turned all the more frantic and bizarre by tourists spilling into the streets in search of answers. A fair number, fearing terrorism, rushed to pack their bags and flee the city. What they didn’t know was that McCarran Airport had been shut down in the wake of the now confirmed crash of a commuter jet coming in for a landing just as the power died on the runways. The commuter plane slid onto the equally darkened tarmac where it collided with a cargo jet and burst into flames on impact. There were some survivors among the eighty-five passengers but the exact number kept changing.

  At first Michael rode Alexander’s shadow through the clutter, trying to reassure the guests and stem the panic. But he quickly gave up when his efforts proved fruitless.

  “They need us in the control room, Michael,” Alexander told him, after listening to a hushed message from a security guard.

  * * *

  The Seven Sins had been built with virtually every eventuality in mind, but there was no precise procedure to follow for something like this. The authorities had been alerted as soon as the return of power allowed, and the next step was to retrieve whatever was left of the victim’s remains via robotic submersible. Eventually, a diver would need to be sent into the waters, but that required the great whites to be herded into the holding area, where they were regularly vaccinated to protect against bacterial infections, no small chore.

  Meanwhile, Michael and Alexander joined Naomi Burns in the mega-resort’s surveillance room, a highly equipped center dominated by the latest in security technology located directly over the casino floor. The command center featured dozens and dozens of closed-circuit monitoring screens showing every inch of the complex thanks to over two thousand cameras stretched across the property. The pictures they provided were watched over by hundreds of personnel also responsible for issues pertaining to climate control, traffic, and surveillance of suspicious persons. An endless sea of smaller screens were layered amid larger ones featuring the most heavily trafficked portions of the property, lighting the otherwise dim confines in a wash of color, a prism-like kaleidoscope that splashed over the faces of the monitors, whose eyes never left the screens for which they were responsible.